Not giving in to seasonal creep

Sometimes I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall because no one seems to care and nothing changes, but I will not stop.

I will not accept seasonal beer creep without complaining. I was going to ignore it this time. But I can’t.

We had a foot of snow here in Massachusetts last week. On the same day, I saw a photo posted on Facebook of Samuel Adams Summer Ale 12 packs sitting in the snow, waiting to be brought into a store. At the time, it was still winter and summer beers were in stores.

This is not an attack on Samuel Adams. I’ve seen many summer beers in stores already from several breweries.

The original idea behind seasonal beers was you would use the ingredients that were available to you at the time due to what season it was. That is not really necessary anymore, because you can pretty much get any ingredient you want from somewhere else, even if it’s not available to you locally.

But, it’s the tradition of the seasonal beers. I remember when I couldn’t wait until the end of November and early December before I could get the Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome, or wait until September to get my hands on a good pumpkin ale.

Now, if I want a pumpkin ale, I’ll just start looking around the Fourth of July.

I wish breweries would respect “the rhythm of the seasons,” instead of rushing to make sure they have the first seasonal on the shelf.

Norman Miller

Sometimes I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall because no one seems to care and nothing changes, but I will not stop.

I will not accept seasonal beer creep without complaining. I was going to ignore it this time. But I can’t.

We had a foot of snow here in Massachusetts last week. On the same day, I saw a photo posted on Facebook of Samuel Adams Summer Ale 12 packs sitting in the snow, waiting to be brought into a store. At the time, it was still winter and summer beers were in stores.

This is not an attack on Samuel Adams. I’ve seen many summer beers in stores already from several breweries.

The original idea behind seasonal beers was you would use the ingredients that were available to you at the time due to what season it was. That is not really necessary anymore, because you can pretty much get any ingredient you want from somewhere else, even if it’s not available to you locally.

But, it’s the tradition of the seasonal beers. I remember when I couldn’t wait until the end of November and early December before I could get the Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome, or wait until September to get my hands on a good pumpkin ale.

Now, if I want a pumpkin ale, I’ll just start looking around the Fourth of July.

I wish breweries would respect “the rhythm of the seasons,” instead of rushing to make sure they have the first seasonal on the shelf.